Predict Taxi Fare with a BigQuery ML Forecasting Model

In this project, I explored millions of New York City yellow taxi cab trips using yellow_trips_2015 dataset. I created a machine learning model inside of BigQuery to predict the fare of the cab ride given model inputs. Lastly, I evaluated the performance of model and make predictions with it.

Objectives

• Use BigQuery to import public datasets.
• Query and explore the public taxi cab dataset.
• Create a training and evaluation dataset to be used for batch prediction.
• Create a forecasting model in BQML.
• Evaluate the performance of your machine learning model.

Task 1

In this task, log in with your google account in google and open https://console.cloud.google.com.

• Create new project.
• In the left side bar scroll to Big Data section and click on Big Query. This will open BigQuery webView UI for you.
• Again select your project in left side bar.
• Click on create new Dataset in the right bottom of BigQuery editor Section.
• Import your dataset by uploading it or import it from any other external sources.
• I used New York City taxi public dataset in this project.

Task 2

Explore NYC taxi cab data.

How many trips did Yellow taxis take each month in 2015?

Query:

#standardSQL

SELECT
  TIMESTAMP_TRUNC ( pickup_datetime, MONTH ) AS month,
  COUNT(*) trips
FROM
  `bigquery-public-data.new_york.tlc_yellow_trips_2015`
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1

Result

What was the average speed of Yellow taxi trips in 2015?

Query:

#standardSQL

SELECT
  EXTRACT(HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) hour,
  ROUND(AVG(trip_distance / TIMESTAMP_DIFF( dropoff_datetime, pickup_datetime, SECOND))*3600, 1) speed
FROM
  `bigquery-public-data.new_york.tlc_yellow_trips_2015`
WHERE
  trip_distance > 0 
  AND fare_amount/trip_distance BETWEEN 2
  AND 10
  AND dropoff_datetime > pickup_datetime
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1

Result

During the day, the average speed is around 11-12 MPH; but at 5:00 AM the average speed almost doubles to 21 MPH. Intuitively this makes sense since there is likely less traffic on the road at 5:00 AM.

After exploring the dataset, Now we have to move to identify our objective.

Identify our main objective

Our objective is to create a ML model in BigQuery to predict the price of a cab ride in New York City given the historical dataset of trips and trip data. Predicting the fare before the ride could be very useful for trip planning for both the rider and the taxi agency.

Feature Selection.

#standardSQL
WITH params AS (
    SELECT
    1 AS TRAIN,
    2 AS EVAL
    ),
  daynames AS
    (SELECT ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', 'Thurs', 'Fri', 'Sat'] AS daysofweek),
  taxitrips AS (
  SELECT
    (tolls_amount + fare_amount) AS total_fare,
    daysofweek[ORDINAL(EXTRACT(DAYOFWEEK FROM pickup_datetime))] AS dayofweek,
    EXTRACT(HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) AS hourofday,
    pickup_longitude AS pickuplon,
    pickup_latitude AS pickuplat,
    dropoff_longitude AS dropofflon,
    dropoff_latitude AS dropofflat,
    passenger_count AS passengers
  FROM
    `nyc-tlc.yellow.trips`, daynames, params
  WHERE
    trip_distance > 0 AND fare_amount > 0
    AND MOD(ABS(FARM_FINGERPRINT(CAST(pickup_datetime AS STRING))),1000) = params.TRAIN
  )
  SELECT * FROM taxitrips;

Result

After feature selection the most important thing is which machine learning model we need use to forecast fare of taxi trip.

ML model creation in BigQuery

CREATE OR REPLACE MODEL
  taxi.taxifare_model OPTIONS (model_type='linear_reg', labels=['total_fare']) AS
WITH
  params AS (
  SELECT
    1 AS TRAIN,
    2 AS EVAL 
   ),
  daynames AS 
  	( SELECT ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', 'Thurs', 'Fri', 'Sat'] AS daysofweek),
  taxitrips AS (
  SELECT
    (tolls_amount + fare_amount) AS total_fare,
    daysofweek[ ORDINAL(EXTRACT( DAYOFWEEK FROM pickup_datetime)) ] AS dayofweek,
    EXTRACT( HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) AS hourofday,
    pickup_longitude AS pickuplon,
    pickup_latitude AS pickuplat,
    dropoff_longitude AS dropofflon,
    dropoff_latitude AS dropofflat,
    passenger_count AS passengers
  FROM
    `nyc-tlc.yellow.trips`, daynames, params
  WHERE
    trip_distance > 0
    AND fare_amount > 0
    AND MOD(ABS(FARM_FINGERPRINT(CAST(pickup_datetime AS STRING))),1000) = params.TRAIN 
   ) 
   SELECT * FROM Taxitrips

Evaluation of Model

#standardSQL
SELECT
  SQRT(mean_squared_error) AS rmse
FROM
  ML.EVALUATE(MODEL taxi.taxifare_model,(
    WITH
      params AS (
      SELECT
        1 AS TRAIN,
        2 AS EVAL ),
      daynames AS (
      SELECT ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', 'Thurs', 'Fri', 'Sat'] AS daysofweek),
      taxitrips AS (
      SELECT
        (tolls_amount + fare_amount) AS total_fare,
        daysofweek [ ORDINAL(EXTRACT(DAYOFWEEK FROM pickup_datetime)) ] AS dayofweek,
        EXTRACT( HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) AS hourofday,
        pickup_longitude AS pickuplon,
        pickup_latitude AS pickuplat,
        dropoff_longitude AS dropofflon,
        dropoff_latitude AS dropofflat,
        passenger_count AS passengers
      FROM
        `nyc-tlc.yellow.trips`, daynames, params
      WHERE
        trip_distance > 0
        AND fare_amount > 0
        AND MOD(ABS(FARM_FINGERPRINT(CAST(pickup_datetime AS STRING))),1000) = params.EVAL 
        )
    	SELECT * FROM taxitrips 
  ))

As we see from the last output the model is trained and the root mean squared error is 9.4 . Now we have to start forecasting trips fare.

Forecasting fare

#standardSQL
SELECT * FROM 
ml.PREDICT(MODEL `taxi.taxifare_model`, (
    WITH
      params AS (
      SELECT
        1 AS TRAIN,
        2 AS EVAL 
      ),
      daynames AS ( SELECT ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', 'Thurs', 'Fri', 'Sat'] AS daysofweek),
      taxitrips AS (
      SELECT
        (tolls_amount + fare_amount) AS total_fare,
        daysofweek [ ORDINAL(EXTRACT(DAYOFWEEK FROM pickup_datetime))] AS dayofweek,
        EXTRACT( HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) AS hourofday,
        pickup_longitude AS pickuplon,
        pickup_latitude AS pickuplat,
        dropoff_longitude AS dropofflon,
        dropoff_latitude AS dropofflat,
        passenger_count AS passengers
      FROM
        `nyc-tlc.yellow.trips`, daynames, params
      WHERE
        trip_distance > 0
        AND fare_amount > 0
        AND MOD(ABS(FARM_FINGERPRINT(CAST(pickup_datetime AS STRING))),1000) = params.EVAL 
    )
    SELECT * FROM taxitrips 
    ));

Output

Conclusion:

I used BigQuery Machine Learning (BQML) and trained machine learning model on New York taxi dataset to forecast the trips fare.

Authors

• Salman Ahmed - Initial work - SalmanAhmed